As the EBU continues to investigate the 2013 Eurovision voting scandal, it’s time to rethink the voting system at Eurovision. How do you measure the best act at Eurovision? How should the final votes be calculated? Regardless of your answer, it’s clear something must be done. Just look at poor Ireland this year. Ryan Dolan was clearly liked better than some other acts in almost every country, but he still finished last.

First, should each country have equal weight? Should the votes of the 32,000 people in San Marino count equally with the 143 million in Russia? On the flip side, if all votes are combined in one pot, then the eight largest countries decide the event.

One possibility is to weight each country (yes this is similar to the U.S. Congress). Each country has a weight of 2. And then an additional weight of 78 (2 * 39 participating countries) is apportioned based on vote totals from that country. Say Russia contributed 10% of the vote, it would have a weight of 2 + 7.8 = 9.8. That weight is multiplied to each country’s final vote when combining all votes to get the final total. So Russia would likely have 5 times the weight of San Marino. That’s more, but San Marino still matters.

Another possibility is to combine all votes across Europe into one total count (“We Are One”, right?) and then combine that with the per country vote results. These two votes do not have to have equal weight, but it would both give some weight based on number of voters. And it would also put some weight to a vote averaged across all countries.

Second, should there be a jury vote? The juries are less swayed by draw order and that’s very important. On the flip side some of the juries appear to be brain dead (the U.K. probably has the same morons selecting the jury as select their entries). And some juries may well be bought off (really – Malta selects Azerbaijan as the best act every year?).

Third, if juries are here to stay, how should they be selected? How free are jurors to vote in Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Russia? And even in democratic countries, many of the jurors work in the industry and as such they will tend to curry favor with those they need for future work.

Even if a country selects honest independent jurors, are they people with sufficient knowledge to make a good decision? Say a Greek feels comfortable giving 12 points to Turkey or Germany (which would have people more upset?), are they a qualified juror?

Keep in mind musical taste is different for each individual. What makes the juror’s preferences any more valid than mine? And if they’re measuring by technical perfection – that is not what makes for an appealing act. It helps, but it’s not even a majority of the presentation.

Fourth, how should the votes be totaled? If the televote is 78% for the 1st place act and the jury vote is 20% for their 1st place votes, are those 1st place votes equal? If a country’s combined vote for 1st place is 65%, is that the equal to another country where the combined 1st place vote is 15%?

Another approach is for each country to have a total of 67 votes and they are allocated among the top 11 acts, based on the percentage they get. If a country really, really likes an act, then they can give .78 * 67 or 52 votes, with a lot fewer votes to the remaining acts. At present the voting is a step function where 1 more vote than the 2nd place act gains as many final votes as getting 98% of the votes in a country.

What do you think? What would make for the best system? And what is the desired result of a “best” system?

David T contributed this report from Colorado. Follow the team from wiwibloggs.com on Twitter @wiwibloggs and keep up with the latest Eurovision news by liking our Facebook page.

Photos: Dennis Stachel (EBU)

David Thielen

David contributed this report from Colorado. You can keep up-to-date on the latest Eurovision news and gossip by following the team on Twitter @wiwibloggs and by liking our Facebook page. Connect with Dave on Google+

[…] the Jury plus the Televote There are many ways to structure the voting, and many ways to structure how you combine the jury and televote. I asked Sietse about the present […]

StillEuroFanJuly 14, 2013 @ 1:33 pm

In my opinion, the old voting sistem is better. At least public and jury will vote using the same criteria, easy to understand for everybody.
As we already have seen, changing voting algoritm this year didn’t stop northern countries and ex-sovietic countries to vote in block, but literally smashed ex-yugoslavian countries and pull down Romanian song. So, if you are rich and/or big and if you really want, you can manipulate the final score using the complicate and confusing actual voting system. If you are not…

AlexJuly 14, 2013 @ 12:09 am

A “fully democratic” vote is an excellent way to make it impossible for certain small countries (San Marino) to do well. In general, governmental systems are not fully democracies because democracy can function as mob rule. A majority can overrule the rights or interests of a minority, regardless of the validity of the rights or the merit of the interests. Hence there is additional structure in the government which is provided to rectify this problem. In the case of Eurovision, the countries with the least amount of geopolitical support suffer hard, regardless of how good the entries are. This is the reason the jury was reintroduced. Andorra 2007 is a good example of this, as well as Austria 2011 and Spain 2012. Does anyone really believe Spain 2012 would’ve deserved to have been in such a low placing as the televote would’ve given it?

The system last year was perfectly fine, and they fixed something that wasn’t broken. This year we had some strange phenomena like Montenegro 4th in televote but failing to make the final, due simply to the fact that they insisted that the juries rank all the entries, and then they decided to average the vote. Moreover, ranking the first place entry with 1 point, second with 2 points (etc.) in this system (well, I forget where they started, but each place had 1 more point than the one before it), is at odds with the famous Eurovision 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 weighting. It just doesn’t make sense what they did, and Montenegro/Romania/Sweden/France/Ireland in particular should complain after their results this year. Go back to the 2010-2012 system!

JulianJuly 11, 2013 @ 11:11 am

@Aufrechtgehn: all 39 voting in final is fair as they all have participated in the competition albeit some eliminated in semifinals (paid the yearly fee, aired the show)… my question would rather be why the big 5 (6 with previous winner) are allowed to vote in semifinals (where they are not present)… but whatever
With regard to voting system whichever it is it should be simple to understand and the full results should be released few days after the final to avoid harmful speculations.
If small countries cannot have a public voting that is immune to manipulation it should be 100% jury vote there (as it actually was the case for some countries even this year – but why is it not transparent and known ahead?).
Juries of 5 is more or less like giving 50% of final result power to one person and can lead to high degree of subjectivity – juries should be broader and diverse, carefully selected and approved (EBU should have a say – and responsibility – in their selection).
Juries giving votes and results one day ahead of the final I see it as another problem – even if they base their opinion on what they saw the day before the final or by seeing several rehearsals – and however they can also be complexly influenced being part of the music industry and close to the Eurovision competition – their choices should be known only by each individual and gathered and added up sometime during the final show or at the hour when final show starts maybe.
It would be fair to give bigger countries more power as to the final result but with a system that is easy to understand and not strongly disproportionate as it can be by using Europewide voting or other complicated quantifiers. For example countries can be divided into 3 tiers based on population, or on previous years (can be last 3-5 years) audience of the final or even better on previous years number of votes cast. In semifinals they give 12 notes 1-12. In the final points can be tier based – small countries award 12 notes and 1-12 points, medium ones award 16 notes and 1-16 points, big countries award 20 notes and 1-20 points.
To reduce difference between jury vote and public vote in the final (where with 26 finalists it can be huge difference and not easy to accept) here is another possibility. Juries have to choose their 16 best points they award between the 1-5 (in semifinal result, jury+public combined) from first semifinal + 1-5 from second semifinal + the big 6 (5+ previous winner). It is an advantage I cannot see how it couldn’t be fair, for the best 5 in each semifinal and to big 6 of which more buy-in is desirable.

Way too complicated. Apart from the die-hard fans, the average viewer doesn’t care about the voting process. Still, I agree, there are a few crucial alterations to make.
First of all, we have to get rid of the damn juries. They simply suck, vote down great songs and tempt countries to enter music that’s irrelevant to the pop market, but tailor-made for the juries’ tastes. Plus, in a democratic society, all power should come from the people.
Which brings me to my next point. Democracy means: one man – one vote. And that’s the way it should be at Eurovision. Just count one vote per country per telephone line. This also nearly nullifies the impact of neighbor, diaspora and power voting.
Finally: I don’t see any justification that a country which was voted out in the semi should still be allowed to vote in the final. Yes, that comes from someone from a Big Five country – this unfair rule has to fall immediatly, of course. All right, everybody should be able to vote – but the votes from countries which didn’t make it to the final should be added up to a combined “rest of Europe” vote, so that you have 27 countries giving their votes on Saturday night, not 39.

AnthonyJuly 10, 2013 @ 10:55 am

I don’t think viewers would want to listen to a whole explanation of the countries weight on the night!

Although I agree with Ben Robertson on the Melodifestivalen 50% jury/televote. This would reduce the number of countries having the rely on one extreme over the other. Good on televoting but bad on jury as in YOHIO’s case and vice versa.

I’m in favour of keeping the juries. However, the juries should only consists of musicians and composers with experience in the music industry, not some journalist or presenter judging the entries. And there should a variety of ages from the jurors. I heard the UK’s jury were a bunch of older people this year.

Ian DavisJuly 10, 2013 @ 1:19 am

I think that the same system should be carried out but points should be given to all entries except the one that came dead last. That means points are given out 1-25.

Ben RobertsonJuly 10, 2013 @ 1:02 am

Interesting ideas as always.

The best way to try and construct what we want to be a fair voting system is probably to dictate what we want.

I would like Eurovision voting to ensure:
1) If something is a jury or a televote favourite in a country, then at the absolute worst case scenario they both get in the top 10 and announced as points.
2) If the jury do not really have favourites, then I want their effect to be nullified in the country of voting.
3) Ranking every song like this year is a tedious process and at the bottom levels really subjective for any human being. Nobody should have to work out the difference between the 21st and 22nd best songs in a one hour window.
4) However tempting to use percentages, a borda count is quick and if anything technically goes wrong it should be something a maths genius can do by hand during the live TV show.

There are other things I would add (I would want less songs to nullify running order issues, a drawn running order itself, and bigger juries from a guaranteed variety of backgrounds), but they don’t necessarily impact on this.

However, even with those, I can see that we have things to alter. Speaking only from personal experience, I find the new semi final format much more interesting and entertaining. To pick 10 songs from 17/18 to go through feels manageable to the brain. This gets too messy with 26. In the semis, I would ask jurors to go 1-12 Eurovision style, in the final 1-20, so it would go 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12,14,16,18,20 – giving points to 15 songs in total.

Each of the jurors would do this, and then added together. For example if song A got maximum points from all jurors it would have 100 points. However if it was maximum with 2 and nothing from the rest it would score 40 points.

The televote would also go 1-20, but multiplied by 5. So 5,10,15… 15 I think should be right partly because of the expectations we can have on juries, but also because it should be enough songs to stop eastern voting purely eastern and so on. The televotes (and juries) HAVE to give something to the other side. This should hopefully reduce some of the political vendetta we get towards the contest.

This system means if the jurors don’t agree, then the points are very close. Think like how it works in Melodifestivalen. It is 50% jury/televote, but if the juries all disagree then the televote suddenly becomes really strong. Yohio in a Eurovision system would not have finished as high as 2nd in the final this year as an example.

I am a reluctant jury fan as it means that we are watching two different contests in theory (especially as the juries do get criteria), but can see the advantages for the brand of Eurovision. There are many ways to do 50% splits, but the new way this year rewards most those songs that mellow high televotes and jury points combined too much. Yes, that is preferable, but it isn’t all. It shouldn’t be correct that they need to agree – good songs can be loved by many and hated by song – that is perfectly normal. We should ensure that a huge televote from across the continent is supported in points even if the experts don’t – they could potentially in the final kill a song from a winning televote to zero and that is not ok.

FrancescaJuly 9, 2013 @ 9:52 pm

I have a love-hate relationship with the jury and televoters, so I have complicated feelings about this.
The one thing I don’t like about giving a proportion based on population is that a few countries would dominate Eurovision (Russia, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain). So there would be a “Big 6” to some extent.
Here is what I propose: if the difference between the televoting and jury points for one country is more than 5 places, the televoting gets prominence.
Also, there should be more spots in the final. Imagine if there were 30 songs per year. It’s only 15 more minutes, but better for a lot of countries. Also, 26 is a weird number

DanielLuisJuly 9, 2013 @ 9:43 pm

All of those suggestions are pretty bad. They’re way too complex for you casual viewer. Can imagine that being explained during the night, and can you imagine how the votes would be presented with some of the suggestions? The viewers would be WTF?!

I definitely think that the juries and televoters should have equal wait. Theoretically, the jurors, given their professional expertise, should be better able to evaluate the lyrical, musical, and performance aspects of an entry than the typical layperson. Though, I think that the juries need to be larger (there’s a nice article on ESC Insight about that). And, since the juries have been back, there has been a better diversity among musical styles and geography, I think, of entries that qualify for the final and finish in the Top Ten.

The in-country weighted voting is an intriguing idea (given the uproar, political and otherwise, that would occur if the ESC went to an Electoral College voting system, I think we can not count that idea). I think allowing countries to give their points in proportion to the number of votes could theoretically work – it would drastically alter the outcome, but it would also force the EBU to release the per country voting. Though, if we let countries do that, why stop at giving points to just the top eleven vote getters – that would result in a country not using all of its points; why not make it so that a country gives points to everyone who received votes? Imagine how awful an entry would have to be in order to receive a null points with that system!

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